Practical Home Improvements That Are Worth Your Time and Effort

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When we talk about home improvements, we usually speak about things that we want but don’t necessarily need. Let’s think about it for a moment. Do you really need a new garden, or do you just want something to impress the family for when they come around for thanksgiving this year? Do you really need to renovate a room and turn it into a study, or could you just save the time and money you spend and work on your regular desk?

Let’s take a moment and explore some practical home improvement ideas that will be worth both your time and money.

Preparing for a child

If you’re getting ready to start a new family or if you’re expecting, then it’s a good idea to get your home prepared for the new arrival. You should try to renovate a room and turn it into a nursery; a safe space for your newborn baby to crawl around and stretch their legs and to keep an eye on them. If you prefer to give your child freedom to crawl around the entire home, then you should prepare crawl-height protection and invest in gates to block entry to dangerous rooms such as the kitchen. You can guard your child against accidents by moving clutter from main rooms, guarding sharp corners of furniture with plastic covers, and block wires and electrical outlets with furniture.

If you want to plan even further ahead, you should dedicate a room to your newborn and turn that into a nursery. As they grow older, you can add a bed and remove all of the baby equipment such as changing tables away, but the idea is to renovate a room so that it’s ready for the newest member of your family.

Whether it’s CCTV cameras, security systems or purifying the air, your home could probably get a little safety boost. CCTV cameras are becoming more accessible and user-friendly thanks to the possibility of getting WiFi-enabled cameras. These connect directly to your home network and you can view them over the internet if you have the correct password and login. This means you can keep an eye on your home no matter where you are, and you can keep an eye on people inside of the home. For instance, if you’re having trouble trust a new carer with your children, then CCTV cameras will give you peace of mind.

But thieves aren’t the only threat you should be worrying about. Carbon monoxide is a silent killer that is both odourless and invisible. It usually leaks due to a bad boiler or pipes in the house that have become worn out and damaged. It’s important to keep all of your appliances well-maintained to prevent the possibility of a carbon monoxide leak, and the best way to do this is via home improvements. If you replace your boiler or your stove, for example, you can ask the contractor to do a thorough check of your entire infrastructure so that you can be safe knowing there are no immediate dangers within the piping of your home.

If you’re still unsure about the advantages of having a safe and secure home, you can visit The Safe Healthy Home for more advice on how to purify air and ensure that the water entering your home is clear. Remember that threats can also come from within the home, not just outside.

Smart homes are now the way of the future. It can be rather difficult implementing smart home functionality into an old building, but it mainly depends on the appliances you use and the speed of your internet connection. As long as you have compatible appliances like your fridge, heating systems and your window blinds, you could technically control your entire home from the comfort of a smartphone.

There are some obvious disadvantages and dangers to this, however. If someone was to gain control of your network and hack into all of your appliances, it could create a serious security breach and, depending on what type of devices you have that are smart, it could create some nasty damage. However, most smart devices are incredibly safe and until hackers find a way to bypass the built-in encryption on these devices and your WiFi network, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

So what can you actually control in a smart home? For starters, imagine going to bed and turning off your lights with a smartphone app, or waking up to a gentle song playing through your sound system. Your house could automatically start the coffee machine and the heating will automatically kick in and balance the temperature of the house so that it’s neither too cold or too hot. Your blinds could automatically open and you’ll get a nice blast of sunshine to wake you up in the mornings.